Baptist Postures Toward Francis of Assisi

by Wyman Lewis Richardson

In St. Francis of America: How a Thirteenth-Century Friar Became America’s Most Popular Saint, Patricia Appelbaum calls non-Catholic endearment with Francis of Assisi “a relatively new phenomenon,” situates its beginnings in the mid-nineteenth century, and attributes it to a growing interest in pre-Reformation history among Protestants, to the increasing ease of travel to and in Europe at that time, and to a greater exposure to Catholics and Catholic traditions in America as a result of immigration from Europe and “the annexation of the Southwest.” She further argues that Protestant approaches to Francis run the gamut from opposition, to skepticism, to selective-if-begrudging appreciation, to the appropriation of Francis as a “proto-Protestant,” to admiration. She convincingly establishes that, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, there did indeed exist a growing phenomenon of Protestant postures toward Francis.

Appelbaum asserts that “one of the earliest sources of this altered thinking was Protestant historicism,” or “‘church history’ as a modern academic discipline.” Interestingly, in her survey of histories of the time she mentions Baptist historian Samuel Lunt Caldwell’s largely appreciative 1877 Baptist Quarterly article, “The Mendicant Orders,” though she points to it as an example of the “proto-Protestant image of Francis [that] provided both a point of connection and a sense of reassurance for Protestants ambivalent about Catholicism.”[1]

This positioning of a Baptist voice near the fountainhead of the burgeoning of Protestant interest in pre-Reformation historiography and, particularly, in the life of Francis of Assisi, is intriguing insofar as it posits a largely and, likely, to some, surprisingly favorable view of Francis to an ecclesial body often considered to be generally anti-Catholic in its sentiments. But is this so as those sentiments pertain to Francis of Assisi? What has been the posture of Baptist people toward Francis in particular? To answer this question, we will consider written allusions to Francis from Baptist pens, the earliest substantial examples of which appear to begin, in confirmation of Appelbaum’s historical proposal, in the nineteenth century.

The volume of Baptist references to Francis requires an organizational schema for evaluation to be made and conclusions to be drawn. Toward this end, I have found the organizational approach utilized by Baptist historical theologian James Leo Garrett Jr. in his 1965 contribution to the “Broadman Historical Monograph” series helpful. In his Baptists and Roman Catholicism, Garrett articulates “three basic Baptist postures toward the Church of Rome: (1) polemical controversy, (2) conversion or evangelization, and (3) dialogue or fraternal exchange.”[2] Our appropriation of Garrett’s categories to Baptist postures toward Francis of Assisi will be applied in this somewhat modified manner:

Polemical controversy: Baptist writings that evidence criticism toward Francis;
Conversion or evangelization: Baptist writings that seek to immerse Francis into a Protestant or Baptist template by treating him as a proto-Protestant or proto-Baptist;
Dialogue or fraternal exchange: Baptist writings that are either partially or wholly appreciative of Francis and evidence a desire on the writer’s part to learn from or interact positively with his life.

POLEMICAL CONTROVERSY

In a June 1859 article, “Romanism Illustrated by the Lives of the Saints,” Baptist Magazine pointed to the alleged hagiographical nature of the biographies of the saints to demonstrate “how utterly unreal and unnatural, how purely arbitrary and fictitious, is the morality of Romanism.” The magazine went on to warn “stern rugged Baptists” against the “mere foppery and affectation of asceticism” represented in these stories. Concerning stories regarding St. Francis, the author bemoaned “the audacious and impious reproduction of Scripture miracles in the legends of the saints” and pointed to Bartholomew of Pisa’s assertion that there were forty “conformities” between the life and death of Jesus and the life of Francis as an example.[3] In this example, we find an uncharitable depiction of Francis couched in what appears to be anti-Catholic sentiments. The reader will perhaps find these sentiments ironically humorous in light of the passage on the magazine’s cover: “Speaking the truth in love. —Ephesians iv.15”.

Something of the same happens in the “Notice of Books” section of the September 1882 edition of famed Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon’s Sword and Trowel magazine. A reviewer observed that while the Rev. J. B. Figgis revealed “a devout and poetical mind, and so writes profitably and pleasingly” in his Lessons Learnt in Italy and The Riviera, “we cannot say we go quite his length in commendation of Francis of Assisi and other Romish saints.” The review explained:

When these personages are spoken of, it needs great caution, or we may be leading the feeble where they will not be so able to stand as we ourselves may be. We do not say that Mr. Figgis is not guarded, but we do not think that he errs on that side.

The reviewer concluded by regretting that this otherwise notable volume would likely not “win the popular ear or be largely influential.”[4]

This reviewer’s approach in cautioning against books that might lead Baptist readers into a theologically dubious engagement with Francis was mirrored in Joe Harrod’s 2013 review of Betsy Barber’s Reading the Christian Spiritual Classics: A Guide for Evangelicals for a 2013 issue of the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology. Harrod (at the time, a PhD candidate at Southern Seminary) expressed concern that Barber offered Francis (along with others) as “helpful guides” since Francis “blurred distinctions between sanctification and justification.” He concluded with an even stronger statement, “I do question how helpful it is to direct evangelicals to authors whose writings seriously distort the gospel and biblical concepts of holiness.”[5] The language of “blurring distinctions between sanctification and justification” and of “distorting the gospel” is consistent with Protestant anti-Catholic polemical terminology.

In 1886, American Primitive Baptist pastors Elder Cushing Biggs Hassell and Sylvester Hassell wrote:

The Franciscan Order, named from Francis of Assisi (a town in Italy), was founded in 1210; and the Dominican Order, named from Dominic, a Spanish priest, was founded in 1216. The avowed principles of both Orders were poverty, chastity and obedience, the latter to be rendered to the pope through the Superior of the Order. Those who entered the Orders thereby renounced all freedom of thought and conscience, and became absolutely devoted to the papal service, each Order, like a vast army, acting as the instrument of a single will. Their fundamental principle, not to work, but to live by begging, was in point-blank contradiction to the express Divine commandment both of the Old and the New Testament that man should labor.[6]

Here we find the fairly standard anti-Catholic allegations of unfettered papal rule and of the surrendering of independent thought placed alongside the particular charge that the early Franciscans, and, by extension, Francis himself, defied New Testament ethical standards by begging.

In the January 1888 issue of Samuel Howard Ford’s Christian Repository & Home Circle, the author cast Francis as an extreme aesthetic around whom dubious claims revolved, as one about whom honest and rigid critique was forbidden by a protective papacy, and as one who, by virtue of proximity, was stained by what would become the central focus of the wrath of the Protestant Reformers: indulgences.

St. Francis of Assisi, while not equaling St. Dominic in flagellation, surpassed him in other respects. He either pretended, or was so imposed upon, as to believe, that Christ appeared to him and impressed his five wounds on his body. He was born near Rome, in 1182. Visions and miracles attended his early life. He called his body “Brother Ass, because it was to carry burdens to be beaten, and to eat little and coarsely.” “His hands and feet,” says his biographer, “appeared to be pierced with nails of hard flesh; the heads were round and black. There was also, on the right side, a red wound, as if made by the piercing of a lance; and this often threw out blood which stained his tunic.” When the reality of this miracle was called in question after the death of Francis, Pope Gregory “rebuked the objectors by a bull (1237), attesting the truth of those miraculous wounds upon his own certain knowledge and that of the Cardinals.” (Butler’s “Lives of the Saints,” Art. St. Francis.)

Perhaps no two fitter men could be found in any age, than Dominic and Francis, to establish those rival orders of monks which have ever been the militia of the popes.

Indulgences originated in this period.[7]

In this Baptist polemic against Francis, his honesty is called into question. Note the interpretive choices offered the reader concerning Francis’ stigmata: deception or manipulative bending of Francis’ own mind to the point of self-delusion. Furthermore, the reference to indulgences simply cannot be overstated as an example of the polemics of proximity. No word and no concept taps into foundational Reformation antagonism quite like the word “indulgences.”

CONVERSION OR EVANGELIZATION

As we approach more positive Baptist postures toward Francis of Assisi, we encounter a number of examples of Baptist writers who attempt to “baptize” or “convert” Francis into a proto-Protestant or proto-Baptist. Samuel Lunt Caldwell’s 1877 writing on Francis is fairly indicative.

Saint Francis was an enthusiast, a mystic, an ascetic. He was a seraphic simpleton, the one element or the other predominating, according as he was regarded with sympathy or with contempt. He believed what he believed with a most realistic faith; and the visions of his imagination became the facts of his life. While he indulged in melancholy as his chief luxury, he was kindled sometimes into the loftiest ecstasies . . . A reformer and a saint, he was gentle and meek; not stern like Dominic, but tender, with human as well as divine love . . . He seems to have been an enthusiast, without genius, without learning; who, by making absolute poverty a religion, struck a want of his age, and by the force of religious fervor carried it captive . . . [Francis was] an Italian, mystical, fervid, genial even in his asceticism; a layman smitten with the love of Christ and an enthusiasm for poverty; a mediaeval Methodist, who kindled a new devotion in the popular heart.

Near the end of his piece, Caldwell warned that the church of his day might easily become guilty of “falling under bondage to money, and interpreting the Gospel by Adam Smith rather than by St. Paul or St. Francis.” Not to worry, Caldwell writes, for “the Church has in her bosom latent powers of self-restoration and new conquest” and that, should such an ecclesial enslavement to the gospel of Adam Smith occur and should the need arise again, “the Benedict, the Francis, the Luther, the Wesley, the Loyola” will “come unexpectedly, as if dropped out of heaven.”

In Caldwell we find all of the elements of the Protestant Francis. Caldwell employs the Protestant language of “reformer” and “Methodist” and, in a move indicative of such efforts, lists Francis alongside other notable Protestants, namely, Luther and John Wesley. Finally, Caldwell promoted the Protestant Francis to his readers by commenting on the power of Francis’ and Dominic’s preaching:

There is a lesson, too, of the power there is in preaching, if you will, no matter what you call it, in the word of man to man, of a poor, self-renouncing man, with the fire of God in his soul; in these spiritual democrats, who wanted no ritual, who went barefoot, and asked nothing but men’s ears; who fell back on that original ordinance which precedes all others, the first of sacraments, the thing which Jesus did, which Paul did, which every orator does according to his occasions, the speech of man to man, the preaching of such truth as is given to such hearers as are given, and which helped make the friars the power they were. Printing will not displace it; civilization will not outgrow it. Religion will always need it, and always use it, and never in vain.[8]

This emphasis on the homiletical prowess of Francis connects deeply with the Protestant, and, in fact, Baptist elevation of the preaching moment as the apex of congregational worship.

It should be noted that listing Francis alongside Protestant heroes is the most common example of Baptist soft-appropriation of Francis. For instance, at a 1977 conference of Southern Baptists on ministering to “the poor and hurting,” James H. Landes, Executive Director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, observed that, “Throughout history, great spiritual awakenings have been led by people such as Francis of Assisi, early versions of the Salvation Army, Wesley, Whitfield, Finney and others, each of whose preaching was validated by ministries to the poor and hurting.”[9]

In his 1903 book, The Baptists, Baptist historian Henry Clay Vedder compared Peter Waldo of Lyons to Francis of Assisi. Waldo had likewise appealed to the Pope for his blessing and protection. “But while Francis, as we know,” writes Vedder, “succeeded, Waldo failed.”[10] Vedder goes on to surmise that Francis would indeed have acted like a Protestant had he not received the blessing of Innocent III. He writes, “That St. Francis would have ceased his work if Pope Innocent III had finally withheld his approval, we cannot for a moment believe.” Thus, Vedder concludes, “Neither did Waldo hesitate; he must obey God rather than man.”[11] In the hands of Vedder, a hypothetical defiance of the pope on the part of Francis anchors him deeply in the Protestant zeitgeist.

Under the heading “The Literature of Missions,” a 1904 edition of Baptist Missionary Magazine favorably recommended T. Harwood Pattison’s The History of Christian Preaching, a publication of the American Baptist Publication Society, observing that it surveyed “great preachers in different periods” like “Origen, Chrysostom, Bernard, Francis, Wycliffe, Savonarola, Luther, Knox, Wesley, Spurgeon, Beecher, Brooks, and Moody.” The review suggested that the book “would make a charming holiday gift to a pastor.”[12] Here we find both the stress on Francis as a homiletician and the situating of his name in a largely Protestant list of names, including the Baptist luminary, Charles Haddon Spurgeon.

In a 1911 Baptist World Alliance meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a British Baptist preacher, Thomas Phillips, pointed to Francis as one example of “a new creature, an original type, a distinct species, a fresh kind of man, as different from the man of the world as the lily is from the nettle, as the palm is from the thorn,” and did so while extolling the virtues of the Protestant Reformation. Philips list of personages that exemplify Paul’s definition of a Christian include, “Paul and John…Francis of Assisi and Madame Guyon . . . Spurgeon and Keble . . . John Woolman and Greenleaf Whittier…Ann Haseltine Judson and Sarah Pierrepont Edwards.”[13] Once again, we have the chain of names that baptizes Francis a proto-Protestant and once again we see Francis put in the vicinity of Spurgeon. The importance of this placement in rendering Francis safe for Baptist audiences simply cannot be overstated.

The Francis-Spurgeon connection was further exploited by Baptist historian, author, and educator Lewis Drummond. In his 1992 biography of the London Baptist preacher, Spurgeon: Prince of Preachers, Drummond wrote of the phenomenon of religious revivals. He observed that, “Revivals have leaders” and that “these leaders tend to be the incarnation of the movement; they personify the awakening in its most intense form.” In his list of examples of such leaders, Drummond mentions “Noah, Abraham, Deborah . . . Samuel, David, the prophets, John, the Apostles . . . Paul . . . Francis of Assisi, Bernard of Clairvaux, Savanoarola, right up to the Reformation and the Puritan-pietistic revival—and Spurgeon.”[14] Drummond placed the name of Francis into similarly esteemed company among Baptists in his 2003 The Canvas Cathedral: Billy Graham’s Ministry Seen Through the History of Evangelism, when he called Francis “a fervent evangelist” who “like [Billy] Graham…longed to see people come to faith in Jesus Christ.”[15] In this, Drummond used another tool for the Protestantizing of Francis: the revivalistic terminology of people “coming to faith in Jesus Christ.”

The application of revivalistic language to Francis can also be seen in Paul Harrison Chitwood’s 2001 PhD Dissertation for Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, “The Sinner’s Prayer: An Historical and Theological Analysis.” Chitwood refers to Francis (alongside Bernard of Clairvaux, Peter Waldo, and John Wyclif) as an example “of authentic, Christ-centered evangelism during the Middle Ages” and as one “who led in significant efforts toward reform and emphasized faith and repentance in [his] preaching.”[16]

Francis’ perceived missionary heartbeat—most notably seen in his astonishing 1219 audience with Sultan Malik al-Kamil of Egypt—established resonances with similar Baptist impulses. In an August 5, 1922, article entitled “Some New Books for the Church Library” published in The Baptist, a weekly publication of The Northern Baptist Convention, reviewer Helen B. Montgomery favorably commends Basil Mathews’ The Book of Missionary Heroes. “One cannot commend too highly this book,” we are told, which consists of certain great biographies that illustrate missionary heroism.” We have here, Montgomery informs us, helpful portraits of “St. Paul, Raymond Hull, St. Francis of Assisi, Papelha, Kapiolani, Elikana, Bishop Patterson, a South Sea Samaritan (Ruatoka), Khama, Mackay and many other name [sic] of famous or obscure hearers of the Torch of Life.”

At times, the Protestantizing of Francis by Baptists included preemptive apologies for Francis against expected counter-arguments. In his essay, “Baptist Principles Before the Rise of Baptist Churches,” published in 1912 in The Baptists of Yorkshire, a “Centenary Memorial Volume of the Yorkshire Baptist Association,” H. Wheeler Robinson, in writing against certain theories of Baptist successionism, argued that while we may not expect to find actual Baptist churches prior to the seventeenth century, we can and should “reasonably look for the activity of the great principles of New Testament religion . . . ” As an example of this, Robinson pointed to the principle of “conversion by conviction” and used Francis, among others, as an example. This is telling insofar as it both renders Francis an acceptable subject for Baptist consideration and makes a soft appropriation of him into a general notion of successionism even as Robinson was eschewing cruder forms of such theories.

In his article, Robinson offered an apology of sorts for his appreciation of Francis by noting that, “Great souls can never be fettered, even by the errors they perpetuate.” Writes Robinson:

An Augustine would break through to God under any system of thought we might conceive; a Francis would see visions and dream dreams of the Eternal in any century. It need not surprise us, therefore, when we read the famous stories of the conversion of these men, to be lifted up into a realm of great issues, and of permanent values, above all controversy; for these men were brought by the experiences of life face to face with God in Christ. The voice that Augustine heard in the garden at Milan, and Francis in the little chapel of Assisi, is the voice of One who is the same yesterday, to-day, yea, and forever, though our interpretation of His call will vary from age to age. Wherever there is religion at all, there will be the possibility of such experiences as these, for man will be seeking God, as God is always seeking man. Whatever be the system of thought and practice under which they live, great souls will find God. But for smaller men, men of the rank and file, the way of salvation needs to be made very plain if they are to find it. In an age which held that there was no salvation outside the visible Church and its sacraments, we cannot measure the average man’s religion by the spiritual experiences of an Augustine or Francis, though we may be sure that many a lesser man, in spite of current superstitions, was feeling after God, if haply he might find him.[17]

Robinson’s apologetic deftly acknowledges what he knows his reading audience will see as the ecclesial fallacies of Francis’ age while elevating Francis above such foibles as a true seeker of God and recipient of divine truth.

This appreciation of Francis alongside a simultaneous comforting acknowledgment of the errors of the church of Rome can be seen in Baptist missionary to Italy George Boardman Taylor’s approach. In Italy and the Italians, his 1898 publication by the American Baptist Society, Taylor, in his chapter “The Strength and Weakness of Romanism, and its Relation to New Italy,” writes of “many of the best men of Christendom” having been “members” of the church of Rome. Taylor—who George Braxton Taylor informs us was reading Paul Sabatier’s Life of St. Francis of Assisi in the winter of 1893–94—acknowledges the greatness of Augustine and Ambrose and sees them as “in a high sense, belong[ing] to the universal church.” In this context, Taylor writes, “Nor can we withhold our admiration for the piety and zeal of Catharine of Sienna and Francis of Assisi.” He sees Francis (and the others) as part of the “good” of the Catholic Church, despite her “abuses, wrongs, [and] corruptions.” Tellingly, Taylor writes, “It is no wonder if persons who do not think soberly fail to distinguish between a system radically wrong and some of its adherents who derive what is lovely in them not from but in spite of its essential errors.” We include this under “Conversion or Evangelization” because there is a kind of soft-appropriation here in the form of Baptist and/or evangelical audience assuagement through the suggestion that Francis’ Catholicism was unfortunate, perhaps incidental, and likely non-existent had he been born in a time and place of more ecclesial options.[18]

A similar dynamic is likely at play in E. P. Alldredge’s 1922 reference (in the Southern Baptist Handbook) to Francis as among “the great men produced by the Catholic Church” alongside his immediate bemoaning of the fact that these men’s potency along with other “elements of power” “are perfectly articulated in the Roman Catholic organization, the world’s greatest autocracy, and are linked together and joined up with a definite program of world conquest in all essential points similar to the ancient Empire of Rome.” Alldredge’s personal appreciation or lack thereof is obscured by his reassuring acknowledgment to his Southern Baptist readers of the corruption of that institution with which Francis was aligned.[19]

Sometimes the Protestantizing of Francis was fairly bluntly stated. In 1923, The Sunday School Board of The Southern Baptist Convention published Piero Chiminelli’s The Baptists in Italy. In this work, Chiminelli refers to Francis as one of the “forerunners of the Reformation in Italy.”[20]

DIALOGUE OR FRATERNAL EXCHANGE

Favorable Baptist postures toward Francis of Assisi, postures that find in Francis a suitable or helpful partner for fraternal exchange, to use Garrett’s language, are numerous. Baptist appreciation of Francis has tended to be centered on Francis’ efforts toward peacemaking, his concern for the poor, and the ecological implications of his life and writings.

Many references to Francis by Baptist writers are positive in a general sense. In his 1875 review of M. Abel Francois Villemain’s Life of Gregory the Seventh, the Rev. S. H. Stackpole of Boston remarked concerning Gregory VII that he “was a moral man; but he was not religious,” that “he was no devotee,” and that Gregory “has no place among such men as Francis of Assisi.”[21]

Famed Baptist historian Kenneth Scott Latourette made a number of positive comments about Francis in his 1953 A History of Christianity. He referred to Francis as “that compelling genius,” “one of the most winsome figures of Christian history,” “no heretic,” and as a person of “sincerity, joyousness, earnestness, and radiant love.”[22]

In 1978 Baptist historian Raymond Brown pointed to Francis (alongside Bernard of Clairvaux) as an exemplary case study in “Meditation on the Passion” in medieval spirituality, referring to him as an “outstanding medieval saint.”[23] Longtime Baylor University professor Bob E. Patterson wrote in 1987 that Francis of Assisi stood as a simple rebuke to skeptical atheists who “conclude that those who tell of ‘encountering God’ are deluded.” Patterson pointed to Francis’ “authentic experience of God” as an argument by which such skepticism is “easily . . . countered.”[24] Judith Y. Holyer described Francis’ spirituality as “based on total obedience to Christ, prayer at all times, desire to suffer with Christ and love of nature in all its forms.”[25] Baptist minister Barry Howard, writing for Baptist News in 2010, sought to show that “St. Francis’ ministry emphases are especially relevant for Baptists in the 21st century.” Among these emphases Howard mentioned “simplicity of lifestyle” and “egalitarianism.” Howard concluded by observing that while “following the path of St. Francis in our time could be considered as radical as it was almost 800 years ago,” it nonetheless “may be a path worth following to revitalize the church and advance the Good News.”[26] And in 2016, Baptist theologian Steve Harmon wrote that “Baptists receive through their hymnals the gifts of Francis of Assisi,” referring to the inclusion of “All Creatures of Our God and King” in many Baptist hymnals.[27]

Peacemaking

In 1929, the Alabama Baptist L. L. Gwaltney condemned capital punishment, called war “eternally wrong,” and “praised Mahondas K. Gandhi’s campaign of passive disobedience against British imperialism. Ghandi, he wrote, was to Hinduism what Francis of Assisi and Leo Tolstoy were to Christianity.”[28]

The December 1981 issue of Sojourners magazine was dedicated to “Francis: The Little Poor Man of Assisi.” In his contribution to the issue, an article entitled “St. Francis of Assisi: Divine Fool,” Baptist historian E. Glenn Hinson wrote of Francis as “a symbol that peacemaking is a thinkable endeavor even in a war-wracked world such as ours.” He continued:

Historians cannot speak dogmatically here, but I would venture these comments. Francis acted as what I would call a "horizonal" person. In the new perceptions that came with his conversion he embodied an outlook which many others felt but could not articulate, an outlook from beyond the horizon of his own age. What was important was that he acted with faithfulness and resoluteness on the light he possessed. Obviously he could not pursue his plan on the basis of a proven outcome. Had he waited for the action to prove itself, he would have done nothing.

Fortunately, in the midst of a confused and complicated set of circumstances, Francis came to know not only Lady Poverty but also Lady Simplicity. He cut through the labyrinth of rationalizations and analyses which paralyze human action and attached himself to Jesus' command. More than anything else, he yearned to follow Jesus. "The only weapon which he would use against the wicked," Sabatier wrote, "was the holiness of a life so full of love as to enlighten them and revive those about him, and compel them to love." He learned to live by dying.[29]

In his book, In the South the Baptists are the Center of Gravity, Edward L. Queen II (at the time of the book’s publication, a Baptist), in commenting on the Southern Baptist Convention’s slowness in condemning systemic racial oppression in the United States, observed that, while truly lamentable, this fact does not mean that there were not good and even prophetic people within the Southern Baptist Convention. “One may ask what predominantly white denomination in this country responded as well as it should have,” noted Queen. Then, Queen observes the paradox of all such institutions:

A denomination that gave the world Pat Robertson and Lester Maddox also produced Will Campbell, Clarence Jordan, Bill Moyers, and even Jimmy Carter. Did not the religious institution that produced Torquemada also produce Francis of Assisi, and both John XXIII and Pius IX?[30]

The Poor

Many Baptist writers have pointed with admiration and conviction to Francis’ love for the poor. Perhaps the most effusively florid commendation of Francis to come from a Baptist pen was Harold Batstone’s 1927 “St. Francis—His Meaning for our Day.” In this truly remarkable article, Batstone argued that “Francis points to the necessity for our world of some men and women who are, shall we say, excessive in the grace of renunciation.” He went on to press that “the Saviour’s poverty” was “one outward feature of the Saviour’s life which stood out in such high relief [to Francis] as almost to assume the attributes of personality.” As a result, writes Batstone, Francis “went about trying to make the poor less poor” and that his own “voluntary poverty” gave him “a pure happiness, a release of higher powers, a cleansing of the senses and a mighty leverage for service.” Applying this to his own day, Batstone asked, “Can we hope to solve the problems of our time while rich and poor alike hold it as their real working faith that well-being can be bought with money?”[31]

Situated between chapters on Martin Luther and Charles Spurgeon, Christian George, former curator of the Spurgeon Library at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote of his pilgrimage to Assisi. George extoled the seriousness with which Francis took the beatitudes and “his legacy of love and faithful devotion to God.” George sees Francis as “a great hero and leader in the Christian faith” and wrote of Francis’ love for and identification with the poor. Francis, writes George,

Confronts our casual Christianity by challenging us to engage God completely with all our heart, strength, mind and soul. But example, he shows us that true freedom is found in vulnerability, real worship, transparency and genuine joy—a lifestyle that is given to simplicity, dependency and community.

Likening life to a solar system, George further noted that some “experience God up close and intimately. With Francis they live on Mercury, burning in and breathing up the fiery fellowship of God.”[32]

The single greatest Baptist emphasis on Francis’ love of the poor is found in Walter Rauschenbusch. Rauschenbusch wrote in 1905 of a series of articles he had been writing on why he was a Baptist:

I do not want to foster Baptist self-conceit, because thereby I should grieve the spirit of Christ. I do not want to make Baptists shut themselves up in their clam-shells and be indifferent to the ocean outside of them. I am a Baptist, but I am more than a Baptist. All things are mine; whether Francis of Assisi, or Luther, or Knox, or Wesley; all are mine because I am Christ's. The old Adam is a strict denominationalist; the new Adam is just a Christian.[33]

In his 1913 book, Christianity and the Social Crisis, Rauschenbusch used Francis primarily as an example of the point that movements rarely survive the genius of their founders. Thus, to the hypothetical query of what the early Christian movement would have become had Jesus “shown [the rich young ruler] favor,” Rauschenbusch surmised that, “Judas would have been deeply pleased with such a reinforcement of the apostolate, but Jesus would have gone through the same sorrow which came upon Francis of Assisi when property was forced upon his Order and its early spirit was corrupted.” In chapter 3, “The Social Impetus of Primitive Christianity,” he sought to further establish the principle that “as soon as the thoughts of a great spiritual leader pass to others and form the animating principle of a party or school or sect, there is an inevitable drop” by noting that a person “may join the Order of St. Francis, but they will not call the birds their sisters and the sun their brother.” That is, they will fall short of the ideals of “the poet-saint of Assisi” who dedicated himself to the service of Lady Poverty. Rauschenbusch’s final reference to Francis in Christianity and the Social Crisis constituted an effort to situate the Franciscan movement in “the religious reform movements of the Middle Ages” that “were very closely connected with wider social causes.” As an example, he pointed to “the movement of Francis of Assisi” that was “inspired by democratic and communistic ideals.”[34]

In his 1913 work, Christianizing the Social Order, in speaking of “a series of remarkable religious movements” that began in the twelfth century and that would go on to include the Franciscans, “the Waldenses, the Lollards, the Taborites, and the Anabaptists,” Rauschenbusch commented that the Franciscan movement had been “protected and perverted by the Church.” He then writes:

When Saint Francis of Assisi wedded the Lady Poverty and refused property for his order as well as for the individual monk, he tried to make parasitic wealth and power impossible for himself and his friends. This most famous and beloved saint of the Middle Ages was the great friend and ideal of the common people, a very incarnation of Christian democracy. In its infancy, before the Church twisted it and wrested it to its own taste and use, the Franciscan movement was charged with an almost revolutionary social sympathy.[35]

In his 1916 The Social Principles of Jesus, Rauschenbusch situated Francis among those “religious leaders who really cared for the condition of the people” and who “tried to create a genuine leadership for them along the same lines.”[36] In his 1917 A Theology for the Social Gospel, Rauschenbusch observed that “the ideal of ‘the poverty of the Church’” was “common to men so unlike as Saint Bernard, Arnold of Brescia, Saint Francis, and all the democratic sects.” Perhaps one of his strongest statements about Francis can be found in this work when he spoke of Saint Francis as “Christlike”:

Jesus lived in a world of high thought and set his face toward the greatest of all aims. But he talked peacefully with simple people, and was impatient when his friends did not want him annoyed by children. He was valorous, fearless, an outdoor man, and an invincible fighter. But he was so tender to the sick and so comradely with the poor that “Christlike” has remained one of the aristocratic adjectives in our language, and men like Saint Francis, who followed him and grew like him, have stood out as the beloved souls, the rare flowers of esoteric humanity.

Rauschenbusch’s final reference to Francis in A Theology for the Social Gospel was to him as one of “the great religious characters . . . who escaped from themselves and learned to depend on God,—Paul, Augustine, Saint Francis, Tauler on whom Luther fed, Luther himself.”[37]

In a review of Canon B. H. Streeter and A. J. Appasamy’s The Message of Sadhu Sundar Singh in Missions: A Baptist Monthly Magazine, the reviewer noted that the volume offers a fascinating look at Sadhu Sundar Singh’s life, observing that Singh’s life was “a life recalling that of St. Francis of Assisi, and whose consciousness of constant communion with the Divine impels him to a life of unselfish activity and the practical service of mankind.”[38]

Bill J. Leonard, in a 2013 opinion piece for Baptist News Global entitled, “Francis I: What’s in a Name,” reflected on the significance of Jorge Bergoglio taking the name “Francis I” as pope. After making a few brief biographical comments about Francis, Leonard emphasized Francis’ concern and love for the poor.

Called to “rebuild my church,” he relinquished the entitlements of his wealthy family and lived among the poor, literally reconstructing declining churches.

The historian Will Durant wrote of Francis: “Braving all ridicule, he stood in the squares of Assisi and nearby towns and preached the gospel of poverty and Christ . . . Revolted by the unscrupulous pursuit of wealth that marked the age, and shocked by the splendor and luxury of some clergymen, he denounced money itself as a devil and a curse and bade his followers despise it.”

He devoted himself to Lady Poverty and became il poverello, the little poor man, warning his followers not to accept remuneration for their work, insisting that the fewer one’s possessions the freer one was to serve God.

Will Pope Francis follow the witness of his namesake? In some ways he has already, rejecting a palatial Archbishop’s residence, car and driver for a more simplified lifestyle. It is too early to predict the path of his papacy, but he has taken a very important name with a very important history.

And what should American Protestants think of this, other than ordering reruns of the film The Mission from Netflix? Perhaps the memory and mission of St. Francis is a good place to start.

Indeed, in a country where the top 1 percent of the population has an income 288 times the median household income, maybe we Americans should pay attention to that name and the gospel behind it.

If Francis I lives out that name the way il poverello did, it could get the Vicar of Christ and the rest of us, Catholic and Protestant alike, into a lot of trouble. Like it did Jesus?[39]

More recently, a 2016 Baptist News Global article entitled “Liberation theologian prompts Baptist minister’s ‘Franciscan conversion’ to serve the poor” described how Jeremy Everett, founding director of the Texas Hunger Initiative, was motivated to fight against hunger by a conversation with liberation theologian Gustavo Gutierrez and also by the Franco Zeffirelli film, “Brother Sun, Sister Moon.”

He had a “Franciscan conversion” in 1997, he says, when he saw the movie Brother Son, Sister Moon, the 1972 biopic about St. Francis of Assisi, on television.

“I watched the story of this young man who seemed to have everything going for him but wasn’t able to be fully devoted to God and his neighbors. He was loving people—not in and of themselves, but for his own ends.

“I saw that and broke down. I packed up my stuff in my Volvo sedan and got away to downtown Birmingham, to a homeless shelter, and gave away my possessions. I knew then that I was called to the poor, but I had no idea what that meant.”[40]

It would be hard to overstate the influence of Baptist pastor, author, and educator, John Piper, especially among the growing number of young Baptist Calvinists. Through Crossway Books, Piper’s voluminous writings sell widely, and his ministry, “Desiring God,” along with his involvement in the popular Reformed movement, “Together for the Gospel,” have given him a uniquely powerful voice among an impressive number of Baptist ministers and educators. The impact of Piper’s largely positive posture toward Francis of Assisi, while likely a bit irritating to the more rigidly Calvinistic wing of his followers, has undoubtedly gone a long way toward gaining Francis a hearing among those who otherwise might not be predisposed to listen.

In a 1981 article at his “Desiring God” website entitled “Lenin, Francis, and Paul,” Piper played off of Vladimir Lenin’s reference to Francis in an effort to extol the virtues of the Little Poor Man.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the Russian revolutionary who founded Bolshevism which became Soviet Communism, said, “I made a mistake. Without doubt, an oppressed multitude had to be liberated. But our method only provoked further oppression and atrocious massacres. My living nightmare is to find myself lost in an ocean of red with the blood of innumerable victims. It is too late now to alter the past, but what was needed to save Russia were ten Francis of Assisi’s” (Letters on Modern Atheism).

I can’t let 1981 go by without a word about St. Francis, who was born 800 years ago this year.

Piper goes on to reference Francis’ birth and the founding of the Franciscan order before quoting a conversation between Francis and Brother Leo from The Little Flowers to demonstrate what perfect joy is. Piper concludes by using Francis’ conversation as a platform to invite his readers to “join me in pursuing Philippians 3:10!”[41]

In his popular 2006 book, What Jesus Demands From the World, Piper concluded his introductory “Word to Biblical Scholars” by favorably quoting and leaving without further comment New Testament scholar Luke Timothy Johnson’s statement:

The Jesus to whom Saint Francis of Assisi appealed in his call for a poor and giving rather than a powerful and grasping church was not the Historical Jesus but the Jesus of the Gospels. One must only wonder why this Jesus is not also the “real Jesus” for those who declare a desire for religious truth, and theological integrity, and honest history.[42]

Prayer

Jerry Moye’s 1996 publication, Praying with the Saints: Julian of Norwich and Francis of Assisi, represents perhaps the lengthiest and most sustained positive Baptist interaction with Francis. Moye writes that he “became a third order Franciscan with the Anglicans in Hong Kong” in the 1980s after receiving permission from the bishop to do so. Moye writes of being “befriended by two great souls” as a Southern Baptist missionary in Hong Kong: Julian of Norwich and Francis of Assisi. Francis helped Moye “probe more deeply who is the Christ” and gave him “a depth to understanding the Bible” as Moye saw “how they tried to appropriate scripture for their time and situation.” Moye saw Francis as “a fresh incarnation of the Incarnation, a living icon who makes it possible to see the Christ.” “Francis did not intentionally aim at reforming the church,” Moye writes, “but he did so.”

Moye considers Francis’ life and the implications of it in the chapter, “Called to Radical Discipleship.” He then considers three different types of prayer evidenced in Francis’ life: adoration, intercession, and surrender. In each, he tells Francis’ story, highlighting one particular kind of prayer. In the conclusion of each chapter, Moye offers an “Examen” in which the reader is asked various questions arising from that chapter’s engagement with Francis. In this way, Moye calls the reader to interact with Francis.

Among the gifts Francis gives us, Moye identifies:

· the “help” Francis gives us in “checking our ambition”;

· the way that Francis “enables us to prepare for a midlife reckoning”;

· the way “Francis…prepares us for a good death”.

Moye saw Francis as “driven by an inner fire, a spirit that longed to come closer and closer to God and his purity. He was consumed by joy and the summons of God’s love. He is a good illustration of the saying, “To see the face of God is to die.”[43]

The Ecological Emphasis

Controversial Southern Baptist theologian Dale Moody wrote in his 1981 systematic theology, The Word of Truth, that Francis was a forerunner of ecological theology and that whereas previously “a relation between ecology and theology was thought to be the rumination of unconventional people like Francis of Assisi,” Francis’ 1224 “The Song to Brother Sun” sounds “relevant…now to scientific man who has come to see more clearly his dependence on solar energy and the whole realm of creation.”[44]

In his 1994 Ethics, Baptist theologian James William McClendon Jr. expressed his desire to “point toward a Christian ecology, a view of creation that can replace the old human rulership and mastery views that have shown themselves so disposed to corrupt.” McClendon writes against the “world-transcending motif” of Origen and others and points favorably instead to “the ecological motif,” a motif that is “world and nature affirming.” As proponents of this motif, McClendon points to Irenaeus of Lyons, Augustine, “Francis of Assisi with his embrace of nature,” and Luther, Calvin, Karl Barth, and Teilhard de Chardin.[45]

John Weaver, in his contribution to The Place of Environmental Theology, published jointly by the Whitley Trust and the International Baptist Theological Seminary in Prague, pointed to Francis and Hildegard of Bingen as examples of those “who saw in the world the presence of God” and who promoted appropriate Christian ecological stewardship. Weaver urged, on the basis of their examples, that Christians “learn to think and act ecologically; repent of extravagance, pollution and wanton destruction; and recognize that human beings find it easier to subdue the earth than they do to subdue themselves.”[46]

As a subset of this ecological focus, some Baptists have appreciated Francis’ love of animals. In 2013 Michael D. Sciretti Jr. contributed a chapter to the book, Gathering Together: Baptists at Work in Worship, entitled, “The Christian Year: Practicing the High Priesthood of Believers.” In his call for Baptists to honor and take their place in “the larger Christian tradition of which they are a part,” Sciretti proposed, among other things, the following:

For starters, on St. Francis of Assisi Day (October 4) or the closest Sunday, Baptist churches could develop a fun yet meaningful “Blessing of the Animals” service, which connects the spirituality of St. Francis with a tangible compassionate action—blessing and celebrating how animals can be little epiphanies of God’s love.[47]

An October 2012 article from Baptist News entitled “Baptists embrace pet blessings” speaks of one Baptist church’s animal blessing ceremony held “each October to commemorate the life of St. Francis of Assisi” and of how “the practice is cropping up here and there in moderate and progressive Baptist churches where it will likely spread.”[48]

Francis, the Saint for Everyone

Timothy George, the founding dean of Beeson Divinity School and participant in “Evangelicals and Catholics Together,” has consistently extolled the person and virtues of Francis.

In his six-session video study, “History of Christianity,” released in the year 2000 through Christian History Institute and made available for schools and churches by Vision Video, Dr. George spoke of Francis in session 2, “The Quest for Order: Medieval Christendom.” He devoted a little over six of the thirty minutes of the session to Francis. Situating Francis and the Franciscans in his discussion of “the rise of the mendicant orders,” Dr. George contrasted the Benedictine ideal of stabilitas with the Franciscan ideal of mobilitas. He referred to Francis as “the supreme mendicant reformer” and emphasized that Francis’ “conversion coincided with his identification with the helpless, the poor, and the sick.” George described Francis’ life and that of his early followers as “a life of literal deliberate imitation of the way of Christ and His apostles,” and concluded with these words:

Still the legacy of Francis, a saint beloved by Protestants and Catholics alike, reminds us that Jesus’ call to follow Him can break through any social barrier or ecclesiastical system. We can still join our prayer to his when we say, “Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace,” and we can still lift our hearts to the Christ who call us no less than Francis to see the world through the eyes of the Savior’s love.[49]

In a June 4, 2013, Christianity Today article entitled “Our Francis Too,” Dr. George commented on the new Pope taking the name of Francis and championed the universal appeal and accessibility of Francis.

Since the Reformation, many of the names chosen by popes-Pius, Clement, Leo, Urban, even Benedict-sound quaint to non-Catholic ears. But the humble Francis of Assisi is a saint for everyone. Francis challenged the church of his day-not by conforming to the standards of the world but by returning to the pattern of Jesus, the one who did not seek status but humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on the cross (Phil. 2:5-11).
Early on, in a radical act of dispossession, Francis broke decisively with his former life as a soldier and playboy. He stripped off his clothes and ran out of the bishop's palace stark naked, saying, "I will no longer be called the son of Pietro Bernardone. From now on I shall say simply, 'Our Father, who art in heaven.' "

He concluded the piece by quoting favorably Francis’ prayer:

Most High, Glorious God, bring light to the darkness of my heart. Give me right faith, certain hope, and perfect charity, insight and wisdom, so I can always observe your holy and true command. Amen.[50]

In a May 16, 2016, article for First Things entitled “Francis: A Springtime Saint,” Dr. George wrote a lengthy article in which he extolled Francis’ desire “simply to be like Jesus” and his radical devotion to and imitation of Jesus. George called Francis “a Jesus-saturated saint” and waived off secular attempts to appropriate Francis bereft of his religious convictions. He warned against the twin dangers of romanticizing Francis or of writing him off as a fool. Writes George:

The little poor man of Assisi holds an enduring fascination to all those who have been touched by his life. Some of those who had known him best remembered his life and tried to summarize its effect. They compared him to the sun which shone upon a world lying torpid amid wintry cold, darkness and sterility. They said he had illuminated it with rays of truth and set it aflame with love. “Thus did he bring the world to a kind of season of Spring.”[51]

In his Thursday, March 9, 2017, plenary lecture at the “Reformation500” conference at Union University, Timothy George began his comments with an aside that, in his estimation, what the church now needs is not “The Benedict Option” (as proposed by Rod Dreher in his book by that title) but “The Francis of Assisi Option.”[52]

The late Calvin Miller was an influential Baptist author with an appeal that transcended the Baptist fold. Through his decades of ministry, Miller pastored a large church, was a professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Beeson Divinity School, published numerous widely-read books, and spoke countless times in churches, conferences, and conventions, often Baptist in nature.

Miller referenced Franco Zeffirelli’s “Brother Sun, Sister Moon,” in his 1967 Once Upon a Tree and Zeffirelli’s depiction of Francis’ disrobement, concluding, “The Cross had given him a reason to live, and the disdain that marked the faces of the onlookers was refuted by the song of freedom that set him singing in the snow.”[53] In 1984, in his book A Hunger for Meaning, Miller wrote of Francis as one who had forsaken self, had fallen “in love with everything God had made,” had “called the sun his brother and the moon his sister,” and had seen “every person as special.”[54] In 1995, in Walking With Saints: Through the Best and Worst Times of Our Lives, Miller pointed to Francis as one who understood that, “Instead of confessing Christ only when we experience pain, we should learn to confess Christ even before the pain arrives,” noting that Francis, “when attacked, stripped, and left naked . . . was found singing (not crying) in the snow.” Later, Miller writes that Francis “counseled” that we learn “to live by reckoning ourselves dead (Rom. 6:11).”[55] In his 1996 anthology, The Book of Jesus, Miller writes that “after 1209 [Francis] lived out the teachings of Jesus and strove to imitate Christ” and that Francis “preferred being rich in godliness.” He then included a selection from The Little Flowers in the anthology.[56] In 1997, in his leadership book, The Empowered Leader, Miller used Francis as the antithesis of “egocentric leadership” and as a model for the “cure” of such leadership: “surrender.” After referencing Francis’ “custom of kissing lepers,” Miller explains, “Kissing lepers is only for those who have given so much away that they have nothing else to love.”[57] In 1998, in his devotional book, Until He Comes: Daily Inspirations for Those Who Await the Savior, Miller writes of Francis taking “the Kingdom of God to the poor and the mentally ill” and of his begging and dependence “on simple fare.” Miller concluded that God was all Francis had.[58] In his 2003 book, The Power in Letting Go, Miller speaks positively of Franco Zefferelli’s depiction of Francis’ “ultimate statement of rejecting all material things” in his disrobement.[59] In his 2006 book on preaching, Preaching: The Art of Narrative Exposition, Miller, while recognizing the apocryphal nature of the statement, pointed to Francis’ alleged words, “Preach the Gospel. If necessary use words,” as an example of the fact that “the best preachers are heard before they preach, not during their sermon nor because of it.”[60] In his 2006 work on pastoral ministry, O Shepherd, Where Art Thou?, Miller pointed to Francis’ love for lepers as an example of one who understood that “pastoral care of the needy is a ministry unto Christ himself.”[61] He again referenced “Brother Sun, Sister Moon” and the scene of Francis’ disrobement in his 2007 book, The Path of Celtic Prayer: An Ancient Way to Everyday Joy. There, Miller used Francis’ disrobement as an illustration of the argument that, “Nakedness is a powerful metaphor of acceptance. And a kind of nakedness is required for spiritual intimacy to reach its zenith.”[62]

In a lecture at the Child Life Conference on January 31–February 3, 1961, which was sponsored by the Education Division of the Southern Baptist Convention Baptist Sunday School Board, Baptist theologian James Leo Garrett Jr. spoke of Francis as the common possession of the church when he said:

Is it not tragic that many children know far more about the lives of famous athletes, of Hollywood stars, and—yes—of criminals than they know about Polycarp and Irenaeus, Ambrose and Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux and Francis of Assisi, John Wyclif and John Hus, Martin Luther and John Knox, Conrad Grebel and Roger Williams, John Wesley and William Carey, Mary Slessor and Walter Rauschenbusch, John A. Broadus and George W. Truett?[63]

CONCLUSION

It is the position of this study that written references to Francis of Assisi from Baptists are largely, though certainly not wholly, positive. While I make no claim that herein is contained an exhaustive catalogue of written Baptist references, I do assert that the examples provided are thorough enough that conclusions can be reasonably drawn. How accurately these written references reflect the views of Baptist people at large is beyond the scope of this article.

In the 2002 publication Shaping a Christian Worldview: The Foundation of Christian Higher Education, Baptist professor Harry Lee Poe, in his essay, “The Influence of C. S. Lewis,” writes of C. S. Lewis’ wide appeal among Christians of various denominations and movements. He states that Lewis “has that rare appeal that one also finds in Francis of Assisi, whom everyone wants to claim as their own. Perhaps it is the inner recognition that if I were to be the kind of Christian I ought to be, he is what I would be.”[64]

Poe’s observation correctly explains how Francis of Assisi has been given such widely-affirming plaudits among Baptists. The people called Baptists have long been driven by a primitivist impulse, a restorationist desire to get back to the simple obedience of the church as depicted in the book of Acts, that is, to a simple imitation of the life of Jesus Christ and his earliest followers. Could it be that the manifestation of this ideal in the life of Francis of Assisi has elevated him above whatever misgivings Baptist people might have about Catholicism and has made him, on the whole, an object of both appreciation and emulation? Could it be that Francis’ preaching (Caldwell), his perceived revivalism (Drummond, Chitwood), his missionary and evangelistic efforts (Montgomery, Drummond), his capacity for and demonstration of love (Latourette, C. George, Miller), his yearning for and experience of God (Robinson, Patterson, Rauschenbusch), his love for God’s creation (Moody, McClendon, Weaver, Sciretti), his piety (Taylor), his prayer (Holyer, Moye), his simplicity, poverty, and identification with the poor (Howard, Hinson, Batston, Rauschenbusch, Leonard, Everett, Piper, T. George), his peacemaking (Hinson, T. George), his joy (Piper), and the reformist nature of his actions and words (Caldwell, Vedder, Chiminelli) create connection points with the Baptist movement that would emerge some four hundred years later? Above all else, could it be that the sheer beauty of Francis’ desire to be conformed to the image of Christ Jesus and the enactment of that desire in his astonishing life lifts him above those differences that have traditionally divided believers into the rarified air of those luminaries that are truly the common possession of the church at large?

It is the contention of this article that this is so, and that an objective evaluation of written references to Francis from Baptist pens bears this fact out.

[1]. Patricia Appelbaum, St. Francis of America (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 3–16.

[2]. James Leo Garrett Jr., Baptists and Roman Catholicism (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1965), 7–8. In 1961, Garrett wrote:

[3]. Editor, “Romanism Illustrated by the Lives of the Saints,” Baptist Magazine 51 (1859): 340–343.

[4]. C. H. Spurgeon, ed., “Notice of Books,” The Sword and the Trowel (1883): 499.

[5]. Joe Harrod, “Review: Reading the Spiritual Classics,” Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 17.3 (2013): 91.

[6]. Elder Cushing Biggs Hassell and Sylvester Hassell, History of the Church of God (New York: Gilbert Beebe’s Sons, Publishers, 1886), 444.

[7]. Samuel Howard Ford, “Ecclesiastical History,” Ford’s Christian Repository & Home Circle 46.1 (January 1888): 271.

[8]. Samuel L. Caldwell, “The Mendicant Orders,” Baptist Quarterly (April 1877): 247, 255–256.

[9]. Editor, “Churches Challenged to Match Words With Deeds,” Baptist Press (September 29, 1977): 1.

[10]. Henry Clay Vedder, The Baptists (New York, The Baker & Taylor Co., 1903), 57–58.

[11]. Ibid., 58–59.

[12]. Editor, “The Literature of Misisons,” Baptist Missionary Magazine 84 (1904): 32.

[13]. Thomas Phillips, “Alliance Sermon,” in The Baptist World Alliance: Second Congress, Philadelphia, June 19–25, 1911 (Philadelphia, PA: Harper & Brother Company, 1911), p.157.

[14]. Lewis A. Drummond, Spurgeon (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1992), 266.

[15]. Lewis A. Drummond, The Canvas Cathedral (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2003), 223.

[16]. Paul Harrison Chitwood, “The Sinner’s Prayer: An Historical and Theological Analysis” (PhD dissertation, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2001), 20.

[17]. H. Wheeler Robinson, “Baptist Principles Before the Rise of Baptist Churches,” in The Baptists of Yorkshire (London: Wm. Byles & Sons Ltd., 1912), 29–30.

[18]. Taylor, George Boardman. Italy and the Italians. (Philadelphia, PA: American Baptist Publication Society,1898) 355–56. Taylor, George Braxton. Life and Letters of Rev. George Boardman Taylor, D.D. (Lynchburg, VA: J.P. Bell Company, Printers, 1908).

[19]. Alldredge, E.P. “Italy, the Modern Latin Kingdom.” Southern Baptist Handbook. (Nashville, TN: The Baptist Sunday School Board, 1922) 129–31

[20]. Peter Chiminelli, The Baptists in Italy: Their History and Work (Nashville, TN: Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, 1923), 33.

[21]. S.H. Stackpole, “Hildebrand,” The Baptist Quarterly (1875): 91.

[22]. Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of Christianity (New York, NY: Harper & Publishers, 1953), 429–431.

[23]. Raymond Brown, “Medieval Spirituality,” Baptist Quarterly 27 (1978): 198.

[24]. Bob E. Patterson, “Revelation and the Bible,” in Perspectives on Scripture and Tradition, ed. Robert L. Perkins (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987), 23.

[25]. Judith Y. Holyer, “Continuity and Discontinuity Between the Medieval Mystics and the Spirituals of the Radical Reformation,” Baptist Quarterly 35 (1994): 234.

[26]. https://baptistnews.com/article/from-assisi-lessons-for-baptists/#.Wz5IBS-ZOlM

[27]. Steven R. Harmon, Baptist Identity and the Ecumenical Future (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2016), 156.

[28]. Wayne Flynt, Alabama Baptists: Southern Baptists in the Heart of Dixie (Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 1998), 344.

[29]. https://sojo.net/magazine/december-1981/st-francis-assisi-divine-fool

[30]. Edward L. Queen II, In the South the Baptists are the Center of Gravity. Chicago Studies in the History of American Religion, eds. Jerald C. Brauer and Martin E. Marty (Brooklyn, NY: Carlson Publishing Inc., 1991) 56–57.

[31]. Harold W. Batstone, “St. Francis—His Meaning for our Day.” Baptist Quarterly. 3.5 (1927), 200–204.

[32]. George, Christian. Sacred Travels. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006) 53, 55, 57–58.

[33]. Walter Rauschenbusch, “Why I Am a Baptist,” The Rochester Baptist Monthly (November 1905): 4th paper.

[34]. Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis (New York, NY: The Macmillan Company, 1913), 76, 94, 334.

[35]. Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianizing the Social Order (New York, NY: The Macmillan Company, 1913), 83.

[36]. Walter Rauschenbusch, The Social Principles of Jesus (New York, NY: Association Press, 1916), 108.

[37]. Walter Rauschenbusch, A Theology for the Social Gospel (New York, NY: The Macmillan Company, 1917), 116, 162, 272.

[38]. Howard B. Grose, ed., “A Christian Mystic of India,” Missions: A Baptist Monthly Magazine 13 (1922): 221.

[39]. https://baptistnews.com/article/francis-i-whats-in-a-name/#.WgyhZLbMyCQ

[40]. https://baptistnews.com/article/franciscan-conversion/#.WgydyLbMyCQ

[41]. https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/lenin-francis-and-paul

[42]. John Piper, What Jesus Demands From the World (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2006), 36.

[43] Moy, Jerry. Praying with the Saints. (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys Publishing, Inc., 1996) 101, 56, 62, 96–97, 106.

[44]. Dale Moody, The Word of Truth (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1981), 192.

[45]. James Wm. McClendon Jr., Doctrine (Nasvhille, TN: Abingdon Press, 1994), 157–158.

[46]. John Weaver, “Teaching Environmental Theology,” in The Place of Environmental Theology, eds. John Weaver and Margot R. Hodson. (Oxford: Whitley Publications, 2007), 24, 39.

[47]. Michael D. Sciretti Jr., “The Christian Year: Practicing the High Priesthood of Believers,” in Gathering Together: Baptists at Work in Worship, ed. by Rodney W. Kennedy and Derek C. Hatch (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2013), 36.

[48]. https://baptistnews.com/article/pet-blessings-becoming-baptist-practice/#.Wz5G9S-ZOlM

[49]. This video series has been shown and its accompanying student workbook distributed in numerous churches and Christian schools. It would go on to win a “Bronze Plaque” at the 48th Annual Columbus International Film and Video Festival in 2000, a “Platinum Award” at the 2001 Worldfest film festival in Houston, and an ICVM Crown Award in the same year.[49] Matthew Oser, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Vision Video, says of the influence of George’s series:

We have sold 5,500 units of this DVD via wholesale distribution, had about a dozen streaming companies or Television stations show its content (spanning North America, Europe, Asia, Australia), and sold over 2,000 units through our direct to consumer distribution. It is one of our best selling and most treasured pieces we carry on the history of Christianity. (Email correspondence with the author.)

[50]. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2013/june/our-francis-too.html

[51]. https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2016/05/francis-a-springtime-saint

[52]. Audio of Dr. George’s address was regrettably not included at the conference website, though the author of this article was present and heard the comment.

[53]. Calvin Miller, Once Upon a Tree (West Monroe, LA: Howard Publishing Co., Inc., 2002), 161–162.

[54]. Calvin Miller, A Hunger for Meaning (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1984), 122.

[55]. Calvin Miller, Walking With Saints (Thomas Nelson Inc., 1995), xix, 216.

[56]. Calvin Miller, The Book of Jesus (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1998), 310-311.

[57]. Calvin Miller, The Empowered Leader (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 1997), 196.

[58]. Calvin Miller, Until He Comes (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishing Group, 1998).

[59]. Calvin Miller, The Power in Letting Go (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2003), 37–38.

[60]. Calvin Miller, Preaching (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2006), 25. This statement has been mentioned a number of times by Baptist writers. A 1997 Baptist Press article quoted Richard Land, then executive director of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, as repeating the saying upon the occasion of his presenting “a check for $15,689.81 [to establish] an African American student endowment at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.” http://bpnews.net/3962/101097-land-delivers-check-address-at-new-orleans-founders-day Walter B. Shurden wrote, “Baptists would be smart in the coming decades if we heeded the counsel of St. Francis of Assisi, a Catholic, who said, ‘Preach the gospel at all times; if necessary use words.’” “Baptists at the Twenty-First Century: Assessments and Challenges,” in Turning Points in Baptist History: A Festschrift in Honor of Harry Leon McBeth, ed. Michael Edward Williams and Walter B. Shurden (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2008), 308.

[61]. Calvin Miller, O Shepherd, Where Art Thou? (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2006), 24.

[62]. Calvin Miller, The Path of Celtic Prayer (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007), 144.

[63] Garrett, James Leo, Jr. “Christian Knowledge and Conviction.” The Collected Writings of James Leo Garrett Jr.: 1950–2015. Edited by Wyman Lewis Richardson. Vol. 8 (Eugene, OR: Resource Publications, 2023) 163.

[64]. Harry L. Poe, “The Influence of C.S. Lewis,” in Shaping a Christian Worldview, eds. David S. Dockery and Gregory Alan Thornbury. (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 2002), 92.